Scapegoat: The Death of Prince of Wales and Repulse (17 page)

So did Phillips act rashly in taking Force Z out without adequate escort? The answer is no. He has been criticized for his decision-making and for rashness in taking out Force Z, but in the case of his escorts he certainly took a gamble, but one that was justified. As regards submarines, he saw them (quite reasonably on the basis of the information given to him) as more of a threat than bombers. An officer close to Phillips wrote: ‘Admiral Phillips was very conscious of the danger from Japanese S/Ms; our own S/M screen was quite (through lack of recent training) inefficient. He certainly rated the danger from S/M attack as greater than that from high-level bombing attack.’
⁷

Asdic was relatively inefficient and unable to give a depth reading (a crucial issue as depth charges had to be set to explode at a given depth), and likely also to be confused by the different temperature layers found in tropical waters. Yet a fast capital ship moving at over twenty knots and zigzagging is an extremely hard target, and the one thing Phillips’s ships had on their side was speed. As for mines, Phillips ordered Force Z to steer east and away from the Japanese minefield off the eastern entrance to Singapore Strait (it is not known whether this was by accident or design), and steered clear of a further Japanese minefield by the Anambas islands. His destroyers were relatively untrained in anti-submarine work, and only one was equipped for minesweeping. Yet in both cases, submarines and mines, Phillips’s judgment that the risk was justified was born out by events, something for which a man accused of being an armchair admiral has not received enough credit. One is left to wonder if with even one of Cunningham’s ‘crocks’ available to him the submarine that spotted Force Z might not have been differently dealt with.

As with so many commanders before and since, Phillips had to act with what he had been given. He did actively seek destroyer reinforcement, both from the US fleet and by ordering two ‘S’ class destroyers from Hong Kong, as well as asking for the cruisers
Exeter
and
Achilles
to join him in Singapore.
⁸
He had also earlier asked for the four ‘R’ class battleships to join him.
⁹

What does seem inexcusable is Cunningham’s action in sending two ‘crocks’ to reinforce Force Z. What is slightly sickening is the excuse that was offered as to why
Encounter
and
Jupiter
were chosen by Cunningham. They were recent arrivals, it was argued, so their departure would do less to break up the team, and most of the destroyers in the Mediterranean were ‘F’ class ships, so it made sense in terms of maintenance, repairs and spares to detach an ‘E’ and a ‘J’ class. It was nonsense, of course, and pure duplicity. The Mediterranean used the request as an excuse to clear out its trash bin.

There appears to have been some confusion on the part of historians between what is an understandable act on Cunningham’s part – no beleaguered wartime commander wants to lose his best ships – and what is excusable: ‘Having been asked to detach two ships, the Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean, not unnaturally detached the two oldest vessels under his command.’
¹⁰

Cunningham shared with Churchill charismatic powers of leadership and the capacity to inspire those who served with him. Yet as we shall see in a later chapter, his was a flawed personality, as was Churchill’s. Another similarity with Churchill was Cunningham’s willingness to blame others for what was his fault. It does not reflect well on him that he felt justified in blaming Phillips for the loss of
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
, but failed to acknowledge that when called on for support he had paid the due of loyalty all servicemen owe to each other in false coinage.

The closer one looks at the ships that made up Force Z the more one is forced to conclude that this was a diplomatic show force rather than a fighting force. Its most powerful component, regardless of chronic design weaknesses, was never fully-worked up, and, as a comparator, would not have been allowed to sea as a result by the German Navy. Its second capital ship, that needed to be flung about the sea like a destroyer to avoid bombs and torpedoes, had steering engines so venerable that its crew felt they were not up to the strain and had been told to ‘go easy’ on them. Two of its four escorts were ships designed for an earlier war and not equipped to meet the threats of the new one. Tom Phillips did the best he could with what he had. He proved his credentials as a fighting Admiral by seeking additions to his force at every opportunity. He may have been a diplomat; he was also a fighter. Yet what he had to fight with, despite his best endeavours, was not good enough. The blame for that is not Tom Phillips’s, but goes home to Churchill, the Admiralty and Admiral A.B. Cunningham. It was the result of their actions that the force that set out from Singapore earned this description from one of the most highly-regarded historians of the period:

‘So it was a puny force of six ships – puny compared to the forces available to the Japanese in the South China Sea – that sailed off into the bright, red sunset at 1735 on 8 December.’
¹¹

Chapter 8

Intelligence, SS
Automedon
and ‘Matador’

T
here has long been a theory that the British knew more about Japanese intentions in the Malayan Peninsula in 1941 than was admitted at the time. There is the story, reported above, that Singapore intercepted Japanese sighting reports of Force Z. There is also a story which cannot now be verified because the source of it, an officer who survived the sinking of
Prince of Wales
, died before his account could be checked:

‘There is also hearsay evidence that the Intelligence on Admiral Phillips’s staff found, on his return to Singapore after the sinkings, that the naval staff ashore had known of the presence of Japanese torpedo-bombers in Indo-China while Force Z had been at sea but had not thought it necessary to send a warning signal.’
¹

Another historian claims that the British had a limited ability to read Japanese naval signals, and that the British knew four hours in advance an attack would be launched against Force Z. Unfortunately, the source for this allegation is not made clear.
²

As we have seen, there was confusion in many levels of communication, including between the signals Intelligence division and the army and RAF. It is at least possible that vital intelligence was not passed on to both commanders in Singapore and to Force Z. This matters because had Phillips been more clearly informed he would have been extremely unlikely to stay around Kuantan as he did, but chosen instead to make maximum speed back to Singapore. It also needs to be remembered that the delay off Kuantan was at the behest of Captain Tennant of
Repulse
, and did not originate with Phillips.

What is clear beyond reasonable doubt is that Phillips was woefully ill-informed about the range and power of Japanese aircraft. This is dealt with more fully in a chapter below, but in essence the Royal Navy based its assessment of Japanese capabilities round its carrier-based biplane, the ‘Stringbag’ or Fairey Swordfish, and the land-based Beaufort. Both had significantly shorter range than their Japanese counterparts. British experience pointed to 200 miles as the standard reach of torpedo bombers, and that the risk from them at 400 miles or over was negligible. The British had no idea that Japanese aircraft were capable of at least twice that range, and could launch torpedoes at twice the height and twice the speed of their Fleet Air Arm equivalents. It is interesting that this failure to recognize the strength of Japanese
materiel
did not extend to Japanese submarines, which were regarded as a potent and effective threat. As for surface ships, the last ship built for Japan in Britain was the battle-cruiser
Kongo
in 1910. Ironically, it was this vessel the crews of Force Z were told they were most likely to face if they met any Japanese surface forces, and the men were understandably optimistic about the outcome of a duel between Britain’s most modern battleship and a battle-cruiser, albeit modernized, that predated the First World War.

Thus though dismissal of Japanese
materiel
was not universal and across the board, what does seem to have infected service culture, and spread to the ranks, was an arrogant, colonial, racist and above all plain wrong judgment on the fighting prowess of the Japanese:

‘In lectures troops were told that the Japanese were small, myopic and technically backward … The British military attaché at the Tokyo embassy complained after a visit to Malaya: ‘our chaps place the Japs somewhere between the Italians and the Afghans’ … Japan’s failure to defeat China had not impressed European soldiers.’
³

The publicity given to the arrival of
Prince of Wales
in Singapore and other vessels (a failure to name that rankled with survivors of
Repulse
until their dying day) was also quite a gross intelligence failure. Intended to inflate Force Z as a deterrent, it arguably failed entirely in that aim and gave the Japanese significant operational intelligence. It also created a level of public expectation that in effect made it impossible for the two ships to sneak out and hide in the islands or retreat. As the Admiralty sowed, so Force Z reaped.

One question that remains unanswered despite the vast amount of print expended on the story of Force Z is whether or not the Admiralty actually knew that the Japanese had long-range torpedo bombers within range of the British force. One reason for thinking they did is the unsubstantiated report credited to a now-dead survivor of
Prince of Wales
: ‘After I got back to Singapore, Tom’s Staff Officer (Intelligence), who also survived the sinking, told me that he had discovered since his return that intelligence about these torpedo bombers had been available in Singapore.’
⁴

A further piece of evidence is the otherwise inexplicable signal timed at 2210 on 9 December, when Force Z was en route to Kuantan, from the Admiralty, warning Phillips about the danger of a Taranto-style attack on Singapore. Such a signal only makes sense if the Admiralty had been told the Japanese had torpedo-bombers capable of reaching Singapore:

‘Tom asked if I knew what the First Sea Lord was getting at. I said I knew what he was referring to but that I couldn’t see any relevance since there was, so far as I knew, no possibility of torpedo attack in the Johor Strait until either the Japanese had carriers in the area or had established shore-based aircraft in Malaya. He said that was what he felt too.’
⁵

If it was indeed known by the Admiralty or even at Singapore, it is clear that it was not known to Phillips, or to any of his staff.

The sinking of the two ships was unusual in that more people survived than were killed. We have testimony from a wide range of people, including senior people who were with Phillips until the last minute. This was not like the sinking of the
Bismarck
, where the most senior survivor was a relatively junior officer whose vision of what was going on was limited to what could be seen from a gunnery director tower. Unfortunately the deaths of people most closely concerned with this issue has meant that it is likely forever to remain a premise rather than ever be proven a certainty. It would, however, be typical of the dysfunctional organization that was Singapore if vital intelligence had not been passed on to the person for whom it was most vital. The story of
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
is full of ifs and buts – if the weather had not lifted, if Force Z had not lingered off Kuantan, if the Brewster Buffaloes had arrived in time… To this list must be added another topic: if Phillips had known there were torpedo-bombers in range of his force, would he have acted differently? It can never be proven beyond reasonable doubt, but I believe the balance of probability is that a man of Phillips’s proven intelligence would have at the least addressed the return of his ships to Singapore with a degree more urgency. As ever in this most imponderable of disasters, even then Force Z might not have avoided its fate. Was Force Z sunk by the failure to pass on vital intelligence information?

Operation Matador

It is frequently said that the military at Singapore were unprepared for war with Japan. This is not true. A disaster had been predicted in the mid-1930s and was reinforced by further reports after the outbreak of European war. The problem was that, with one exception, precious little had been done to bolster the known weakness of Singapore’s defences, particularly as regards a land invasion. This arose not because of an under-estimate of the weakness of Singapore, but more a belief – or perhaps just a hope – that actual war would never happen. One thing that was done was planning for Operation Matador, a pre-emptive invasion of southern Thailand to prevent a Japanese occupation. In the event, the British imposed double jeopardy on themselves with the plan. Planning for Matador took time and resources away from reinforcing the Jitra Line, sometimes described as Singapore’s Maginot Line, time and resources which were not justified when Matador – which had actually been sufficiently viable for the Commander-in-Chief to be given permission on 5 December to launch it on his own initiative in the event of invasion – was called off: ‘… preparations for Operation Matador had been allowed to distract attention from quite basic safeguards at Jitra.’
⁶

No one can know now whether or not Matador might have worked. Its basic concept was sound, and had it succeeded even in part it would have helped keep control of vital airfields in RAF hands, with a subsequent knock-on effect on the RAF’s ability to provide cover for Force Z. It was bedeviled from the outset by an almost obsessive fear on the part of the Government of breaching Thai neutrality before the Japanese had given at least equal cause for complaint to the Thai Government. However, what really killed it was failure to act on and delayed intelligence, which allowed for indecisiveness on the part of the military command. This failure to pass on or make proper use of intelligence could be seen as strengthening the case for arguing that other, vital information was not passed on to Force Z. On 6 December a Hudson bomber spotted the Japanese invasion force of about twenty transports, with naval escort, but Brooke-Popham in Singapore persuaded himself in Singapore that he could not be sure of the convoy’s destination, and even wondered if it was part of a ruse to get Britain to violate Thai neutrality before Japan did. Bad weather closed in, and though the RAF sighted the invasion force again on the afternoon of 7 December, for some reason the information did not reach Singapore HQ until 9.00pm that night, when the convoy had split up to mount various landings. Brooke-Popham postponed a decision on Matador. By 8 December it became clear that the Japanese had won the race to Singora: Matador, a pre-emptive strike, made no sense after the event.

The failure to launch Matador had in it the seeds of destruction both for Singapore and
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse.
As regards the former, Matador meant that vital supplies of things as basic as barbed wire and signaling cable were stored ready for transport, rather than being available to defend against the Japanese. As for the latter, the collapse of air bases along the length of the Peninsula was a major factor in denuding Force Z of air cover. Had Matador been launched, it would no doubt have been as chaotic as the rest of the defence of Singapore. The difference would have been that it would have shared some of the chaos in unsettling the invaders, instead of concentrating the chaos on the defenders alone.

SS
Automedon

Another incident related to Intelligence that has caused considerable controversy, is the sinking of the steamer
Automedon
on 11 November 1940 by the German surface raider
Atlantis.
For some reason the ship had been entrusted to deliver to the Commander-in-Chief in Singapore a package containing Top Secret documents which gave the gloomiest possible assessment of the strength of British forces in Singapore, stated that a fleet would not be available anywhere near immediately to be based in Singapore, that Hong Kong was indefensible and that Britain would not declare war on Japan if it invaded Indo-China. In effect, the documents displayed extraordinary weaknesses in Britain’s ability to defend its Far East territories, and suggested in the event of war Japan would face far less resistance than might otherwise have been expected. It remains a mystery why such important and secret documentation was given to a lowly steamer to deliver. Brooke-Popham, who had finished his journey to his new command by seaplane, could even at a pinch have taken it himself. The material was contained in the type of small, green weighted bag, with holes in it that allowed sensitive documentation to be thrown overboard if it looked like the material would be captured or compromised. Unfortunately, in opening fire on
Automedon
the first shells from
Atlantis
destroyed the bridge and killed the personnel who would normally have disposed of the bag. An enterprising German officer leading the boarding party recognized from its appearance what value the bag might hold.
Atlantis
’s Captain transferred the bag to a ship he had captured earlier, which delivered it safely to the German Embassy in Tokyo and thence to Berlin, but not before a copy had been given to the Japanese. There was some initial suspicion from the Japanese, who suspected a forgery designed to draw Japan in to war with Britain. It now seems certain that the report on the military preparedness of Singapore may have played a significant part in Japan’s willingness to contemplate all-out war, though it is doubtful that the leaking of the document caused war. Certainly it is reported that the Captain of the
Atlantis
received an ornate Samurai sword, of which the only other two awarded were to Goering and Rommel.

In effect the captured paper said that in the event of war, or the threat of war, Britain would play for time to allow forces to be built up, and would not be in a position to offer military resolve for some months. Whilst such information might not in itself have caused war to break out, it is conceivable that it might have influenced the nature of that campaign. The Japanese took an extraordinary gamble in the speed of their assault, and indeed in taking on Singapore itself. Their armour-piercing bombs had all gone on the attack on Pearl Harbor. There were no spare torpedoes after the initial attacks on Force Z. Japanese naval forces were stretched to the extreme, as is witnessed by the fact that the nearest carrier when Force Z was attacked was nearly 2,000 miles away and the heavy escort for the invasions was supplied by a venerable battle-cruiser that had been launched before the First World War. We know now how short the Japanese were of essential supplies when Singapore surrendered. Is it possible that the realization that Britain saw time as its greatest asset in the capture of Singapore was the most potent reason behind the Japanese launching a campaign that denied this commodity to Britain above all others?